There is uncertainty in the business capital Johannesburg, where the ANC also lost its majority in Johannesburg, as it did in Pretoria and also, humiliatingly, in Port Elizabeth, officially known as “Nelson Mandela Bay” after the late former ANC leader and president.
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Ahead of final results, the ANC looked set to remain the biggest party in Johannesburg but could lose its overall majority in the country’s economic centre.
In June, a South African court rejected President Jacob Zuma’s efforts to appeal the nearly 800 charges brought against him.
The loss of Pretoria comes on top of the ANC conceding defeat Friday in Port Elizabeth, a key battleground of Wednesday’s (August 3) municipal election.
Since South Africa’s first all-race election in 1994, the African National Congress party has had widespread support on the strength of its successful fight against white-minority rule.
It blamed a “narrow focus on internal factional battles, the corruption scandals and the growing distance from the people” for eroding the party’s high moral ground and weakening its political capacity to play “its historical role of leading society”.
“The most historic thing about this election is people rejected the racial divisions and said its possible for black and white South Africans to work together”, Maimane said.
Some Tweeted pictures saying “Jesus has returned” with an image of a man dressed like Jesus. “The clever blacks have spoken”, he is reported to have said, using the same “clever blacks” phrase that Mr Zuma once used to describe urban youngsters who apparently don’t feel as comfortable with the ANC as their counterparts in rural communities.
“For far too long, the ANC has governed South Africa with absolute impunity”, Maimane told reporters Saturday.
Additionally, the DA only narrowly missed an opportunity to oust the ANC for control of Johannesburg, which includes the storied all-black township of Soweto, winning 38 percent of the vote to the ANC´s 45 percent.
At the last general election in 2014, the ANC took more than 60% of the vote. It has declared that its brand is good governance. The Democratic Alliance (DA) which got 46.65 percent of the vote compared with the ANC’s 40.99 percent, with 98 percent of ballots counted.
The ANC has said “we will reflect and introspect where our support has dropped”.
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Zuma survived an impeachment vote in April after the Constitutional Court said he breached the law by ignoring an order to repay some of $16 million in state funds spent on renovating his private home. “The 2019 campaign starts now”, he said. From the left, the Economic Freedom Fighters-a self-styled Marxist-Leninist-Fanonist Party-has attracted the support of many young people who are leaving the ANC to seek more radical solutions to the country’s 50 percent youth unemployment rate; since 2013, the party has captured hundreds of posts once held by the ANC.
